Anthony Discenza, Teaser #1, 2009. Photo courtesy of Catherine Clark Gallery.

In an April 1964 letter to his agent, Candida Donadio, Pynchon wrote that he was facing a creative crisis, with four novels in progress, announcing: “If they come out on paper anything like they are inside my head then it will be the literary event of the millennium.” (Gussow 1998)

How does my obsession with coincidence open to include trends of populist politics or consumer production, and does that count as coincidence when it’s clearly just indicative of larger social trends? When does it cease to be coincidence and start to become a basic navigation of multiple instances? For example, I started noticing Tea Party stickers around the neighborhood. When I’d seen the third one, I thought back on my experience of seeing the first two and I started to make a mental map of locations where I’d seen them. By the fourth, I started to feel that it was getting less personal; that I no longer owned the experience of connecting those things. It made me think of cheeseburgers.

The way that experience is mediated by the reassurance of constancy and repeated consumption… well, this is kind of a different thought, but it does deal with repetition of experience. Things do remain constant, which in product-terms makes me feel that I also remain constant. A hamburger in Idaho, a hamburger in Japan… I don’t eat beef, but it’s nice to know I could if I wanted to… How do numbers and copies help to make us feel, oddly, more unique? Do they reassure us that we have a sharable experience–that, though we each own each moment, we can also relate to others’ experiences (without having to share our meat)? If you lose your copy, you can always pick up another. Do you remember the story of the pet dog that was cloned?

Is it contradictory to see ourselves as unique, even quirky, when the variety we encourage in people (differences allowed by, or sponsored by capitalism and competition (democracy)) is no longer reflected in what we produce or consume, which is most enjoyable when it’s most predictable?

After seeing the Gadsden flags I went to a Tea Party rally on the lawn of a Meijer (the regional Safeway) in Northville (the regional American town), where I enjoyed a refreshing Mountain Dew. It reminded me of childhood. I was accused of being an infiltrator. It’s true that I was there to shoot video of the crowd and I had been asking provocative questions, which I fielded with a concerned and neutral stare, but I wasn’t pretending to be sympathetic, which is different. I’m working on a video about the color yellow, and about the coincidence of seeing their flags in my neighborhood– and that’s just one aspect of it. I saw one particularly unique handwritten sign–words tightly written to fit as many on the board as possible, like the note cards students use on math exams. I thought it was a beautiful sign, so I asked if I could see it — the guy was waving it to oncoming traffic, after all–but he called me an infiltrator and said I couldn’t see it. Then he muttered something about having to be ruthless. I felt strangely hurt, but I guess I shouldn’t have expected a welcome party.

There was, however, a nice yellow dog in the audience.

Snuppy~

Entrails [63]

• To dream of the human entrails, denotes horrible misery and despair, shutting out all hope of happiness.
• To dream of the entrails of a wild beast, signifies the overthrow of your mortal enemy.
• To tear the entrails of another, signifies cruel persecutions to further your own interests.
• To dream of your own entrails, the deepest despair will overwhelm you.
• To dream of the entrails of your own child, denotes that the child’s, or your own, dissolution is at hand.
• [63] See Meaning of Dreams about Intestines.

Divination (from Latin divination a soothsayer from divus spiritual being, god)

The art of obtaining hidden knowledge by the aid of spiritual or ethereal beings. It is divisible into two main kinds: the inducing of seership or clairvoyance, and the interpretation of signs. Under the former come the oracular responses of the Pythian priestess, of the Cumaean Sibyl, and many similar instances, including all cases where the diviner induces trance or clairvoyance, whether in himself by natural power or by incantations, drugs, or other preparations; or in a subject, as when ink is poured into the palm of a child, who sees visions in it, or by some kind of hypnotism.

Under the second head come geomancy, augury, the reading of the marks on the liver of a slaughtered animal, reading cards, Chinese throwing-sticks, predictive astrology, palmistry, numerology, and a great variety of other forms. Between the two classes are ranged such practices as gazing into crystal or water, where external means and interior vision both play a part in the result. Often it is a means of utilizing one’s own inner faculties, whether by natural or induced clairvoyance, or by employing the agencies which regulate events apparently casual such as the fall of the cards, the marks in the sand, the drawing of lots; and this last is related to the subject of omens.

The universal correspondences in nature, the interrelation of all things, imply that the most apparently casual and trivial events have of necessity connection with other events, so that the one can be interpreted by means of the other, provided only that the diviner knows the rules and has the insight and skill. Thus, in cartmancy, one deals the cards with a mind concentrated on the knowledge desired, and their fall is determined by these unseen and little understood influences. It is evident, however, that the condition and capacities of the diviner play an essential part in the success of the operation; hence the instructions as to fasting, continence, and the like, so often laid down as preliminaries.

The art of divining is and always has been universally diffused. Today this art, in common with many other items of ancient lore, has fallen into disrepute on account of the great abuse to which it has been subjected, as in the case of the abuses of black magic and sorcery. The same remarks would apply as are made in the case of psychism, seances, etc. — that a large proportion of humanity is neither wise enough nor well-balanced enough to meddle with such methods; and there is too much tendency to use the methods for the gratification of mere personal desires or curiosity. We do far better to attend to the cultivation of our spiritual faculties, incomparably more powerful and effective, such as intuition.

It may be added that such practices as the slaughter of animals in order to read the entrails can scarcely be regarded, in any age, as pertaining to divine or white magic.

(See also: Divination , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

The last instance of a thing takes the class with it.

Renee Green, Partially Buried Continued

Really need to get to YBCA

The restlessness of a great city, and the way in which it tumbles and tosses before it can get to sleep, formed one of the first entertainments offered to the contemplation of us houseless people. It lasted about two hours. We lost a great deal of companionship when the late public-houses turned their lamps out, and when the potmen thrust the last brawling drunkards into the street; but stray vehicles and stray people were left us, after that. If we were very lucky, a policeman’s rattle sprang and a fray turned up; but, in general, surprisingly little of this diversion was provided. Except in the Haymarket, which is the worst kept part of London, and about Kent-street in the Borough, and along a portion of the line of the Old Kent-road, the peace was seldom violently broken. But, it was always the case that London, as if in imitation of individual citizens belonging to it, had expiring fits and starts of restlessness. After all seemed quiet, if one cab rattled by, half-a-dozen would surely follow; and Houselessness even observed that intoxicated people appeared to be magnetically attracted towards each other; so that we knew when we saw one drunken object staggering against the shutters of a shop, that another drunken object would stagger up before five minutes were out, to fraternise or fight with it. When we made a divergence from the regular species of drunkard, the thin-armed, puff-faced, leaden-lipped gin-drinker, and encountered a rarer specimen of a more decent appearance, fifty to one but that specimen was dressed in soiled mourning. As the street experience in the night, so the street experience in the day; the common folk who come unexpectedly into a little property, come unexpectedly into a deal of liquor.

Left: Dickens at Night (Wax)

Walking the streets under the pattering rain, Houselessness would walk and walk and walk, seeing nothing but the interminable tangle of streets, save at a corner, here and there, two policemen in conversation, or the sergeant or inspector looking after his men. Now and then in the night–but rarely–Houselessness would become aware of a furtive head peering out of a doorway a few yards before him, and, coming up with the head, would find a man standing bolt upright to keep within the doorway’s shadow, and evidently intent upon no particular service to society. Under a kind of fascination, and in a ghostly silence suitable to the time, Houselessness and this gentleman would eye one another from head to foot, and so, without exchange of speech, part, mutually suspicious. Drip, drip, drip, from ledge and coping, splash from pipes and water-spouts, and by-and-by the houseless shadow would fall upon the stones that pave the way to Waterloo-bridge; it being in the houseless mind to have a halfpenny worth of excuse for saying ‘Good-night’ to the toll-keeper, and catching a glimpse of his fire. A good fire and a good great-coat and a good woollen neck-shawl, were comfortable things to see in conjunction with the toll-keeper; also his brisk wakefulness was excellent company when he rattled the change of halfpence down upon that metal table of his, like a man who defied the night, with all its sorrowful thoughts, and didn’t care for the coming of dawn. There was need of encouragement on the threshold of the bridge, for the bridge was dreary. The chopped-up murdered man, had not been lowered with a rope over the parapet when those nights were; he was alive, and slept then quietly enough most likely, and undisturbed by any dream of where he was to come. But the river had an awful look, the buildings on the banks were muffled in black shrouds, and the reflected lights seemed to originate deep in the water, as if the spectres of suicides were holding them to show where they went down. The wild moon and clouds were as restless as an evil conscience in a tumbled bed, and the very shadow of the immensity of London seemed to lie oppressively upon the river.

Richard Long, Walking a Line in Peru, 1972

Parnassus Line: A Six Day Walk in Greece, 2002